Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computational techniques including digital signal processing for music creation and, in particular, to techniques suitable for use in portable device hosted implementations of signal processing for vocal capture, musical composition and audio rendering of musical performances in furtherance of a social music challenge or competition.
Description of the Related Art
The installed base of mobile phones and other handheld compute devices grows in sheer number and computational power each day. Hyper-ubiquitous and deeply entrenched in the lifestyles of people around the world, they transcend nearly every cultural and economic barrier. Computationally, the mobile phones of today offer speed and storage capabilities comparable to desktop computers from less than ten years ago, rendering them surprisingly suitable for real-time sound synthesis and other digital signal processing based transformations of audiovisual signals.
Indeed, modern mobile phones and handheld computing devices, including iOS™ devices such as the iPhone™, iPod Touch™ and iPad™ digital devices available from Apple Inc. as well as competitive devices that run the Android operating system, all tend to support audio and video playback and processing quite capably. These capabilities (including processor, memory and I/O facilities suitable for real-time digital signal processing, hardware and software CODECs, audiovisual APIs, etc.) have contributed to vibrant application and developer ecosystems. Examples in the music application space include the popular I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke, social music apps available from SMule, Inc., which provide real-time continuous pitch correction of captured vocals, the Songify and AutoRap apps (also available from SMule), which adapt captured vocals to target music or meters and the LaDiDa reverse karaoke app (also available from SMule), which automatically composes music to accompany user vocals.
Engaging social interaction mechanisms, such as user-to-user challenge and/or competition, are desired for improved user experience, subscriber growth and existing subscriber retention.